The Consumer Research Glossary

The Consumer Research Glossary

The Consumer Research Glossary

Explore the terminology, methodologies, and concepts shaping modern consumer research, brand strategy, and product innovation.

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A

Quantitative Research

A/B Testing

A/B testing compares two versions using randomly assigned groups and a predefined outcome to estimate whether a change affects performance.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Ad Recall

Ad recall measures whether people remember encountering a particular advertisement, either without prompts or after seeing a cue.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Ad Testing

Ad testing evaluates audience reactions to an advertisement before or after launch to improve its communication and performance.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Advertising Effectiveness

Advertising effectiveness evaluates how well advertising achieves its intended communication and business objectives.

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AI-Powered Research

AI Research Assistant

An AI research assistant supports research tasks such as developing questions, retrieving evidence, summarizing responses, or exploring findings through a conversational interface.

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AI-Powered Research

AI-Moderated Research

AI-moderated research uses an artificial intelligence system to ask participants questions and adapt follow-up prompts during a research interaction.

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AI-Powered Research

AI-Powered Research

AI-powered research uses artificial intelligence to assist or automate selected stages of research, such as question drafting, transcription, coding, and synthesis.

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Consumer Research

Audience Research

Audience research examines the characteristics, needs, media habits, and motivations of the people an organization wants to reach.

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B

Consumer Behavior

Behavioral Research

Behavioral research studies what people actually do, including choices, actions, habits, and interactions in a real or simulated setting.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Affinity

Brand affinity is the emotional connection and sense of shared values people feel toward a brand.

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Brand Positioning

Brand Association

A brand association is a thought, feeling, attribute, image, or experience connected with a brand in a person’s memory.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness measures whether people know a brand exists, including spontaneous recall and recognition when prompted.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Consideration

Brand consideration measures whether people would seriously include a brand among their options for a future category purchase.

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Brand Positioning

Brand Differentiation

Brand differentiation is the meaningful way a brand’s offer or associations differ from the alternatives customers consider.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value a brand name and its associated meanings add to a product beyond its functional attributes.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Health

Brand health describes the overall strength of a brand’s relationship with its market across awareness, associations, consideration, experience, and loyalty.

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Brand Positioning

Brand Identity

Brand identity is the system of visual, verbal, and experiential elements a company uses to express and identify its brand.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Brand Lift

Brand lift is the change in a brand-related measure associated with an advertising exposure or campaign, commonly estimated by comparing exposed and control groups.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is a tendency to repeatedly choose and remain committed to a brand, reflected in both behavior and attitudes.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Perception

Brand perception is the collection of beliefs, feelings, and associations people currently hold about a brand.

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Brand Positioning

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning defines the distinctive value a brand aims to occupy in a target audience’s mind relative to alternatives.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Recall

Brand recall is the ability to retrieve a brand from memory, usually in response to a category, need, or purchase situation without seeing its name.

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Brand Strategy

Brand Tracking

Brand tracking repeatedly measures a consistent set of brand metrics to understand changes in awareness, perception, consideration, and related outcomes.

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C

Advertising & Creative Testing

Campaign Testing

Campaign testing evaluates a connected set of marketing messages and executions before, during, or after a campaign.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate is the percentage of recorded impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions multiplied by 100.

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Product Innovation

Concept Development

Concept development turns an initial opportunity or idea into a testable proposition with a clear audience, benefit, and supporting features.

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Product Innovation

Concept Testing

Concept testing evaluates an early product, service, feature, or proposition with intended customers before committing substantial development or launch resources.

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Product Innovation

Concept Validation

Concept validation tests whether evidence supports an idea’s key assumptions strongly enough to justify its next development decision.

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Quantitative Research

Conjoint Analysis

Conjoint analysis estimates how people value product attributes by analyzing choices or evaluations of combinations of features and prices.

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Consumer Research

Consumer Insights

Consumer insights are evidence-based explanations of why people behave as they do, used to guide a specific business decision.

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Consumer Behavior

Consumer Preferences

Consumer preferences describe the relative appeal of alternatives when people compare products, features, experiences, or benefits.

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Consumer Research

Consumer Research

Consumer research is the systematic study of people’s needs, motivations, experiences, and buying decisions to inform business choices.

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Consumer Behavior

Consumer Segmentation

Consumer segmentation divides a market into meaningful groups whose needs, behaviors, or attitudes differ in ways that support different business actions.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the proportion of eligible visits, users, or interactions that complete a defined action.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Creative Effectiveness

Creative effectiveness is the extent to which an advertising execution earns attention, communicates its message, builds the brand, and supports the intended action.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Creative Optimization

Creative optimization is the iterative improvement of advertising elements using audience evidence and performance results.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Creative Testing

Creative testing evaluates advertising ideas, visual executions, copy, or formats to identify what resonates and why.

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Customer Experience

Customer Effort Score

Customer Effort Score measures how easy or difficult a person finds a specific interaction, such as resolving a support issue or completing a return.

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Customer Experience

Customer Experience

Customer experience is the overall perception formed through a person’s interactions with a company, its products, and its services.

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Customer Experience

Customer Insights

Customer insights are evidence-based understandings of existing or prospective customers that help improve products, experiences, and relationships.

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Customer Experience

Customer Journey

A customer journey maps the stages, touchpoints, goals, and experiences a person encounters while interacting with a brand.

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Customer Experience

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction measures how well a product, service, or experience meets a customer’s expectations at a defined moment.

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D

E

F

G

I

M

Quantitative Research

Margin of Error

A margin of error expresses sampling uncertainty around an estimate under a specified statistical model and confidence level.

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Market Research

Market Intelligence

Market intelligence is the ongoing collection and interpretation of information about a market, its competitors, customers, and external forces.

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Market Research

Market Research

Market research collects and analyzes evidence about customers, competitors, and market conditions to evaluate business opportunities.

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Quantitative Research

MaxDiff Analysis

MaxDiff analysis estimates relative preference or importance by repeatedly asking people to choose the best and worst items from small subsets.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Media Effectiveness

Media effectiveness evaluates how channel selection, reach, frequency, timing, and spend contribute to communication or business outcomes.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Message Testing

Message testing evaluates how an audience understands and responds to a proposition, claim, or piece of communication.

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Product Innovation

Minimum Viable Product

A minimum viable product is the smallest usable version of an offer that enables meaningful learning about a critical customer or business assumption.

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Research Methodologies

Mixed Methods Research

Mixed methods research deliberately combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to answer a connected research question.

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Research Methodologies

Monadic Testing

Monadic testing presents each respondent with only one test item so that reactions are not directly shaped by exposure to competing versions in the same study.

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AI-Powered Research

Multimodal Research

Multimodal research combines evidence from different formats, such as text, audio, video, images, or observed actions, to understand an experience.

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N

O

P

Product Innovation

Packaging Testing

Packaging testing evaluates how a package performs in recognition, communication, preference, usability, and purchase-related judgments.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Post-Testing

Post-testing evaluates an intervention, campaign, or product experience after exposure or implementation to assess outcomes and learning.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Pre-Testing

Pre-testing evaluates research materials, concepts, or advertising before a main study or public launch to identify problems while changes are still practical.

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AI-Powered Research

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics uses statistical or machine-learning models to estimate future or unknown outcomes from patterns in available data.

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Product Innovation

Product Concept

A product concept is a clear description of a proposed offer, including its intended user, benefit, key features, and reason to believe.

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Product Innovation

Product Innovation

Product innovation creates or meaningfully improves an offer to solve a customer problem or meet an emerging need.

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Brand Positioning

Product Positioning

Product positioning defines the specific role and value a product should occupy relative to alternatives for a target buyer and occasion.

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Product Innovation

Product Testing

Product testing evaluates how a product performs and is experienced when people use or assess it under defined conditions.

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Product Innovation

Product-Market Fit

Product-market fit is the degree to which a product satisfies a meaningful market need strongly enough to support sustained use and demand.

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Product Innovation

Product-Market Research

Product-market research examines the relationship between a specific product offer and the customers, alternatives, and conditions in its intended market.

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Consumer Behavior

Purchase Behavior

Purchase behavior describes how people select, buy, and rebuy products, including timing, channel, basket composition, and trade-offs.

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Consumer Research

Purchase Intent

Purchase intent is a respondent’s stated likelihood of buying a product or service under specified conditions.

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Q

R

AI-Powered Research

Research Automation

Research automation uses software to repeat or streamline tasks such as invitations, routing, quality checks, transcription, reporting, and recurring measurement.

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Research Methodologies

Research Bias

Research bias is a systematic influence in study design, collection, analysis, or interpretation that distorts the evidence or conclusions.

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Consumer Research

Research Insights

Research insights are decision-relevant interpretations that connect evidence about people or markets with a clear implication for action.

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Research Methodologies

Research Panels

Research panels are groups of people who have agreed to be contacted for studies, often with profile information used to identify eligible participants.

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Research Methodologies

Research Participants

Research participants are individuals who contribute data or experiences to a study through interviews, tasks, observation, surveys, or other activities.

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Quantitative Research

Research Quotas

Research quotas specify target numbers or proportions for participant characteristics so the achieved sample contains planned groups.

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Quantitative Research

Research Sampling

Research sampling selects a subset of a defined population to provide evidence about that population or explore relevant experiences.

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Quantitative Research

Response Rate

Response rate is the proportion of eligible sampled people who respond to a study, calculated using a clearly defined disposition and denominator.

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S

Quantitative Research

Sample Size

Sample size is the number of observations or participants included in a study or analysis, determining part of its precision and analytical capability.

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Research Methodologies

Screening Questions

Screening questions determine whether prospective participants meet the eligibility criteria for a study.

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AI-Powered Research

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis classifies the evaluative tone of text or speech, commonly as positive, negative, or neutral, sometimes with more nuanced labels.

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Research Methodologies

Sequential Monadic Testing

Sequential monadic testing asks each participant to evaluate several items one at a time, using the same measures after each exposure.

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Advertising & Creative Testing

Share of Voice

Share of voice is a brand’s proportion of measured advertising activity or conversation within a defined competitive set, channel, and period.

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Quantitative Research

Statistical Significance

Statistical significance describes whether observed data are sufficiently incompatible with a specified null hypothesis under a chosen statistical test and threshold.

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Research Methodologies

Survey Respondents

Survey respondents are the people who answer a questionnaire, whether they complete every item or only part of the study.

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AI-Powered Research

Synthetic Respondents

Synthetic respondents are computationally generated personas or response simulations used to explore possible answers rather than collect evidence from real recruited people.

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T

U

V

"I love how Corvane is built specifically for brands…we get insights from customers almost immediately."

Mathew L, CMO at Curive

"I love how Corvane is built specifically for brands…we get insights from customers almost immediately."

Mathew L, CMO at Curive

"I love how Corvane is built specifically for brands…we get insights from customers almost immediately."

Mathew L, CMO at Curive